That these great clippers were brought safely to port is a shining tribute to the masterful skill of their officers.

While many of them were humane and just, with all their severity, the stories of savage abuse which are told of some are shocking in the extreme.
The defense was that it was either mutiny or club the men under.

Better treatment might have persuaded better men to sail.

Certain it is that life in the forecastle of a clipper was even more intolerable to the self-respecting American youth than it had previously been aboard the Atlantic packet.
When Captain Bob Waterman arrived at San Francisco in the Challenge clipper in 1851, a mob tried very earnestly to find and hang him and his officers because of the harrowing stories told by his sailors.

That he had shot several of them from the yards with his pistol to make the others move faster was one count in the indictment.